UT chair disapproves of O’Donnell report

Gene Powell, chairman of the University of Texas Board of Regents, has broken his silence about Rick O’Donnell, the controversial consultant Powell hired earlier this year to facilitate task forces on productivity and online learning.

“That’s terrible. We should never use those words about anyone, much less our valued faculty,” Powell said in an editorial board meeting at the San Antonio Express-News. “I think the entire board was chagrined over that.”

O’Donnell-gate started in March, when reporters found out that Powell had hired him for $200,000 per year during a hiring freeze with no input from UT Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa.

O’Donnell was a former fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative Austin think tank peddling controversial ideas about higher education reform. One of the foundation’s biggest beefs is that universities focus too much on research and not enough on teaching; O’Donnell had written a paper for the TPPF in 2008 that dismissed much academic research as a waste of time and money.

That ruffled some very powerful feathers within the Ivory Tower. The day before he was fired by Cigarroa, O’Donnell wrote a screed to Regent Wallace Hall complaining that top leaders (presumably Cigarroa and Bill Powers, president of UT) blocked his requests for data about faculty productivity and orchestrated a PR campaign to divert attention from the efficiency issue.

At Thursday’s editorial board meeting, Powell and Cigarroa said they share common goals, and that Cigarroa has developed an accountability framework to measure productivity over time. Regents will now sit back and let him work, Powell said.